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| Typography | The art and science of working with type. |
| Characters | Individual letters, numbers, punctuation marks or symbols. |
| Readability | How easy large bodies of text can be read. |
| Type | Characters used singly or collectively to create words, sentences, paragraphs, blocks of copy, etc. |
| Typeface | the form or shape of a group of characters; each one has its own personality. Examples include: Gill Sans, Adobe Garamond |
| Type Family | All of the type styles of a particular typeface. Examples: Arial Narrow, Arial Regular, Arial Bold |
| Type Style | Typeface modifications including weight, width and posture. |
| Font | Digital file containing information that the computer uses to create the typeface. |
| Glyphs | Individual characters of a font. |
| Weight | Variations in the thickness and thinness of the stroke, described as light, regular, demibold, semibold, bold or black. |
| Width | Variations in the condensing (narrowing) and extending (widening) of the type, described as narrow, condensed, compressed or extended. |
| Posture | The angle of type, either upright or slanted, described as plain or roman for upright; and italic or oblique for slanted. |
| Ascender | Upward stroke of a character that rises above the x-height. |
| Descender | Downward stroke of a character that extends below the baseline. |
| Stroke | The main part of the character. |
| Stress | Angle that goes through the thinnest part of a curve. |
| Counter | Enclosed space or hollow of a letter. |
| Baseline | The invisible line on which type sits. |
| Cap Height | The height of capital letters. |
| x-height | Height of a lowercase letter excluding ascenders and descenders. |
| Mean line | Invisible line at the top of the x-height. |
| Serif | French for "little feet". |
| Sans Serif | French for "without little feet". |
| Serif (Roman) Typefaces | Vary in thickness/thinness, and have finishing stroke that projects from the bottom or top of the main stroke. |
| Old Style | Serifs connect to the stroke with a curve and include gradual transition from thick to thin; Examples: Palatino, Garamond, Goudy Old Style. |
| Modern | Serifs are thin and horizontal with extreme transition between thick and thin. Examples: Bodoni, Tiffany Didot and Caledonia. |
| Slab Serif (Egyptian) | Serifs are thick and horizontal with very little or no transition between thick and thin. Examples include: Clarendon, Rockwell, and ITC Lubalin Graph. |
| Sans Serif Typefaces | Characters are uniform in thickness and do not contain serifs. |
| Script | Characters look like hand lettering in a variety of forms; many are connected and slant to the right. |
| Decorative | Characters are usually ornamental. Examples include: Jokerman, Rosewood Std, and Giddyup Std |
| Helvetica | A popular sans serif typeface. |
| Snell Roundhand | An example of a script typeface. |
| Reverse Type | Light colored type on a dark background. |
| Rotated Type | Type that sits on a flat baseline but is set at an angle. |
| Special effects | Applied digital effect on type including: drop shadow, outer glow, or bevel and emboss. |
| Type on a path | Type in which the baseline is anything other than straight. |
| Expressive typography | The idea that type is a physical shape made up of a voice, character, theme and art. |
